Lev Lafayette's journal

So this is a political entry. Starting on the global level, the announcement of radical changes in import tariffs by the United States of America has exposed the instability in global markets and the amount of fictitious capital but is founded on the bizarre calculation from debt. As one commentator put it: "The notion that taxing Lesotho gemstones is necessary for the U.S. to add steel jobs in Ohio is so absurd that I briefly lost consciousness in the middle of writing this sentence". Now, the administration has paused the imposition as global markets tumbled (except China, which has stood up and probably has the edge when it comes to economic resilience). The announcement of the pause seems to have been subject to insider-training.

The international effect of the US administration is influential in the current Australian political climate, with LNP leaders openly aligning themselves to the Trump administration. Policy-wise, they've followed the same playbook as their US counterparts: disastrous economic policies, wrecking public health, stripping the public service, "reforming" labour laws, and, as always, in the pocket of the wealthiest elite of the minerals and energy sector. Even their slogan, "Back on Track" means the track of Abbott, Morrison, and, the worst of them all, Dutton. High inflation, reduced real wages, higher taxes, and higher budget deficits. Weakening public health, education, and, as always, welfare. This 'is The Track' they want us to get back on, with the extra pain of Trump's chaos.

The LNP policies are so terrible they have to abandon them in days after announcing them. With an utter lack of economic literacy and an astounding inability to read the room, they are persisting with their plans for nuclear energy. Their campaign is a mess, with candidates being questioned and even stood down for extremist positions. They are led by a potato. Which we know in the Australian vernacular means a person of remarkable incompetence, the personality of a dullard, and is possibly poisonous. After leading in polls for months as a carping opposition, when actually put on the national stage and asked why they are a viable alternative, they have managed how unready they are. They are definitely not worth the risk; hence their sudden collapse in the polls.

Finally, on a personal note, a number of us met at the Union bar in Fitzroy this week for a small celebration of Tristan Ewins' life, who I wrote about recently. Led by Sarah H., the gathering was mainly made up of comrades from his Young Labor days (I was a bit of an outlier in this regard). All had stories to share (they far more than me), along with loving recognition of his personality traits, his conciliatory and balanced assessment from facts, his equally steadfast and passionate commitment to the underprivileged and working people, and the seriousness he took the public policy. The world is a lessened place by his absence, but we have his writing. I am quite prepared to go out on a limb and suggest that Tristan's writings be read and referred to for some time because he was always thinking about practical implementations and the long-run effects of policy, seriously and long-sighted.

I really feel like I've outdone myself this week, looking at the range and quantity of activities. Of note includes two meetings of the National Tertiary Education Union, one on the future of public education and the budget (with a very good guest speaker, Prof Dr Julian Garrizmann, from the Goethe University Frankfurt, who was steadfastly evidence-based), and the second on Gaza and the student encampments (three motions passed with 1% opposed, demanding disclosure of UniMelb's links to the war, supporting academic freedom to speak on the issue etc). Matters on the former perspective were followed up with a long night with the local ALP branch on the Federal budget and then continuing discussions well into the night with several of the younger branch members. Most people think the budget was pretty good, and it was, with the glaring exception of that enormous bugbear expense, the AUKUS submarines, whose scale I believe is incomprehensible to most.

On Sunday a number of people (myself, Rodney, Andrew, Charmaine, and Penny) from the RPG Review Cooperative ventured out to the outer suburbs to visit our friend Michael who is currently in convalescence. He is in good spirits and seems to recovering well, but tiredness is a factor. In related news, Erica and I visited David and Angela recently who are in the midst of moving from their long-term abode. David kindly gifted us a veritable mountain of roleplaying games and comics (about two bookshelves worth), and Erica and I took great wide-eyed delight fossicking through them over dinner. Speaking of such things, Friday night's south-western Chinese feast with Liana, Julie, and James was an absolute joy and we even managed to finish a game of Trivial Pursuit, which has dated quite significantly. Of another culinary adventure, Ruby's visit came with the impromptu invention of a (spinach and blue-cheese based) béchamel senfsauce verte, in my apparently never-ended attempt to combine French and German cuisines.

All play and no work is, of course, implausible and whilst most of my work is invariably going through some difficult optimised scientific software installs, I have been very impressed with one recent workflow that involves the automatic generation of array job scripts which themselves have job dependencies, which in turn call another set of job arrays. The fact that there have been several support requests this week that are of unusual levels of complexity has been challenging and rewarding, as has a review of the workplace's "five-year plan" with which I hope I have made some reasonable suggestions for clarification, elaboration, and improvement.

With time running out for continuing registration, I have quickly put together an annual general meeting for the Isocracy Network next Saturday with yours truly speaking on "Climate Change and International Politics", which I believe I might know something about. I've scurried to get everything ready for that day, including the annual report, and getting formatting for articles on the website correct; the most recent being "The Case for Opposing the AUKUS Agreement" by Labor Against War, "Cash is an Anachronistic King" by yours truly, and "Reviewing 'At Work in the Ruins'" by Robert Barker. There is also one on the recent events in Gaza forthcoming and, of course, notes from Saturday's presentation will also be included.

In the past several days I've had the opportunity to attend a few political events. The first was a rock-standard ALP branch meeting in Albert Park where there was a quality and respectful debate over advance medical directives for voluntary euthanasia. With some direct experience of this catch-22 loophole in existing legislation, it was good to see the motion passed with overwhelming support. The second event was hosted by The Australia Institute was Tasmanian Liberal MHR Bridget Archer speaking on integrity in politics; Archer is a leader of the handful of small-l liberals in that party and has crossed the floor for a national anti-corruption commission, for protecting transgender students, to support carbon emissions reduction legislation, and even and to censure former prime minister Scott Morrison over his secret appointment to other ministries. With several hundred people attending, I was satisfied with her qualified answer ("Yes, in principle, but the details are important") to my question on whether she would support "truth in political advertising" legislation, a matter that I have written about in the past.

The third event was an absolutely woeful presentation by the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defence, Richard Marles with Pat Conroy, Minister for Defence Industry, defending the AUKUS agreement and the expenditure of an eye-watering $368bn, another matter that I have written about in the past. Unlike the Archer meeting where comments and questions were visible, these were prevented in the Marles-Conroy show, an old trick that allows one to be selective in their choices and prevent audience recognition of the depth of opposition. Marles' attempt to defend the expenditure as being "only" 0.7% of GDP per annum was deeply unconvincing as any analysis of opportunity costs would show, and Conroy's suggestion that these attack-class and fleet-support submarines are a deterrent in a global arms race was horrifical comical. If you want a deterrent you choose defensive weapons, not offensive weapons. These assault submarines are actually a major contribution to the arms race. Both offered the ludicrous bait that the project will provide 20,000 jobs - I'll leave it to others to calculate what good value for money 20,000 jobs are for a $368bn expenditure and perhaps to suggest alternatives.

The issue will, of course, be subject to some debate at the upcoming ALP National Conference in Brisbance this week, which I am attending as an observer, and thankfully there are those within the Party who recognise that this is a "mad, bad, and dangerous". At this stage, I suspect the "war faction" will get what they want for the time being, but this is far from over. In any case, I am looking forward to a few days in BrisVegas, as I haven't been for around a decade or so, and I have arranged a catch-up linner picnic with a few friends next Sunday after the conference in Roma Park.

This evening I completed a difficult short exam for "Physical Basis of Climate Change", just the final exam to go. I also received a grade today for the major essay for the same subject on "Earth's Climate System and Changes Since the Industrial Revolution"; given that I received 27/30 maybe I know something about this. Given that this is one of the more challenging subjects I have taken in my long and varied university career, I am understandably quite pleased with this result. The next few weeks will see final assessments in this and other subjects, and that will be trimester one complete for this degree.

There's been a couple of nice upticks at work today as well. This afternoon I hosted a researcher presentation for one Arshiya Sangchooli who gave a great talk about amygdala and information processing using Spartan and Mediaflux. Apart from speaking on a part of the brain that holds a particular interest to me, it is always great to see how very complex problems that require a lot of data are processed on our system to generate useful results. In addition, a survey of staff from the Cultural Working Group suggested that my work for the past two-plus years in this body has not been in vain, with very significant improvements across all previous metrics of concern. More work to be done, but it was a very pleasing result.

Tomorrow is the annual general meeting of the Isocracy Network, my favourite political organisation (it should be, I founded it). We're having a discussion on recent increases in rents, housing prices, interest rates and the like and why home affordability has become increasingly painful for many Australians. It is a subject that I've been grumpy about for some years but - rather like global warming - there are some powerful vested interests that get in the way of making life better for people. As a related political aside I must mention attending a Melbourne adieu for one Doone Clifton who is moving interstate. Doone is an old North Melbourne Labor Party comrade who I first met over twenty years ago, and her farewell really was quite a meeting of people of that locale and politics. It was also a lovely opportunity to see Rob and Angela L., there as well with follow-up drinks and conversation with these worthy souls.

The mad month of March continues. I knew it was going to be tricky finishing one full-time degree whilst starting another full-time degree, but I am getting through it. The fact it has been coupled with my usual full-time work with additional casual lecturing and tutoring has really meant that my life consists of (a) get up (b) work (c) study (d) sleep and repeat. Still, there is light at the end of the tunnel; completed two workshops today for Cluster and Cloud Computing, I have a lecture to deliver tomorrow, followed by another workshop, and then marking assignments. I've been successful at getting some particularly finicky software installs completed (ceres-solver and pytorch in particular), and I've finished multiple assignments for the master's in climate science degree, the most important I believe being of the relative virtues of carbon taxes versus emission trading; I fall slightly in favour of the latter, although both can run in parallel.

Still, it hasn't been "all work and no play". Liana kindly dragged me out on Friday night to a local pub, "The Rubber Chicken", to see some comedy for a couple of hours (I thought the MC was the best). And on Sunday I spent the afternoon in the fine company of Erica, Angela, and Rob, followed by dinner with Anthony where we primarily discussed the very expensive submarine deal and Keating's remarks that there should be an internal ALP revolt against it. The reality is that they are ridiculously expensive, they're not designed for defensive purposes, they won't achieve their objectives (let's face it, it's to contain China), and they'll be obsolete before they're deployed. So what's the point?

Major events this past week have been across the political and aesthetic dimensions. I have signed up for campaigning in the state seats of Albert Park and neighbouring Prahran, and speaking of neighbours, I was interviewed for the local newspaper as part of a "meet a neighbour" column (the quotes and content aren't exactly 100% accurate, but close enough). Apropos the election, it is fascinating that there is less than two weeks left in this state election, it's been so quiet. This election does have a couple of interesting quirks; the main one which worries me is that the opposition has been taken over by ultra-conservative theocratic types, who really want to recriminalise abortion, voluntary euthanasia, re-allow conversion therapy, etc. The Greens have a problem of a different matter; Labor's introduced the sort of social and environmental policies in government that the Greens have argued from the security of a protest vote. The conservative fear slogan: "Vote Labor, get Greens" is a rather ironic one in this context. The state Labor government has managed to provide progressive civil rights, an employment-based approach to the environment (renewable energy production, mass transit), and the best performing economy in the country.

Apart from political engagements, there have been multiple aesthetic-based engagements this week as well. I neglected to mention a "Big Band" event the week prior at the Ian Potter Centre; really not my style of music, but performed competently enough. Another gathering was a presentation on "Creative Technologies and Intertwined Innovation" at the Victorian College of the Arts, which included Stelarc, discussing some of his most recent activities in body-art and disembodiment. Finally, last night attended an orchestra performance with lei_loo of a selection of works from Joe Hisaishi, the musical genius behind many Studio Ghibli soundtracks, at the National Theatre in St Kilda, a beautiful and just-so-slightly dilapidated building. Like other Fever events, it was a little on the short side but otherwise a very good performance.

An earlier update neglected to mention that I attended (online) the 2022 International Conference on Green and Innovation-driven Development in Cities and Towns hosted in Wuxi, Jiangsu province, PRC. It was a pretty high-level affair, carefully scripted, but the home of where various "garden cities" have been introduced as a reality and with a first-order concern with improving the quality of life in urban environments. The speakers included a few of managerial-political types, but I was impressed by the number of engineers, landscape architects, and environmental scientists that were present. It also increasingly looks like I will be visiting Auckland again in a few weeks to meet up with a number of Pacific Islander representatives where discussion of climate change mitigation will be high on the agenda, which they know the need on a visceral level far greater than most.

Community is that place ("commune") where people, as authentic and equal individuals, develop shared symbolic values and meaning between each other ("culture"). This can be contrasted with those activities which are dominated by the system of politics and money where efficiency, effectiveness, solutions, and hierarchy are the order of the day. A rather impressive comparison between the two has been put together by a children's disability group and most of the content is hard to fault. I will mention that systems get things done, whereas communities tend to provide a means to understanding. As a result, community must come first; solutions without understanding are robotic - and dangerous. Although I will mention that there are toxic communities (and, as a result, toxic systems), those that set themselves up in opposition to other communities, the famous in-group versus out-group division. Neurology suggests there is an innate tendency for the brain to divide people into "us and them" with all the inevitable consequences, and divisive opportunities for weaponisation and ultimate dehumanisation of "the other" - sometimes to the point of war and genocide. Removing toxicity and division in communities, and thus also the systems that depend on them, should be a priority for those who want a better world.

A few nights ago I went to the campaign launch of the new Labor candidate for Albert Park, Nina Taylor, at the Middle Park Bowls club. The beautiful old club building has a long history, including the small fact that one of the early presidents was also the first Labor Premier of Victoria, George Elmslie. There were several state and federal MPs, past and current present among some 250 people who attended the evening, enthusiastic and passionate about the continuing commitment to getting things done in health, education, and infrastructure (to "to make and unmake social conditions", as George Ryan once evocatively said). Now it must be said that political elections are competitive and therefore inevitably include a degree of toxicity, and goodness knows I've seen plenty of that in my time. It is with this in mind that I find myself an advocate for proportional representation, not just in voting (I prefer the Jefferson-D'Hondt method) but also in governance itself (such as the Swiss "Konkordanzsystem") where power is shared proportionally to the share of votes with a principle of collegiality ("Kollegialitätsprinzip").

The second community event I attended was a Southbank 3006 meeting at the Horizon Club, which I learned had come from members of the local resident's association that were more interested in events rather than advocacy. Both are valuable and necessary of course. Southbank does have its own interesting demographics; more than 20% younger than the national average, 40% less married, more than double the percentage with tertiary degrees, five times the number of people with Chinese ancestry, seven times the number of Mandarin speakers, less than half of the national average born in Australia, 50% more with explicitly no religion, 50% greater in personal income, more professionals, and so forth. It is good to see a genuine attempt to build community in this largely vertical suburb (98% of residences are apartments) and will be sure to attend many more events organised by this group. One particular and unexpected joy, however, was meeting a dear old friend Liz J., whom I had lost contact with over 20 years ago! I don't think one could ask for a more serendipitous encounter at a community meeting. But that's how it works.

An election has finally been called for Australia, and a new government will be determined on May 21st. Because we don't have truth in advertising laws for Federal elections (something I have argued for years), I thoroughly suspect that the campaign will be very dirty, especially in its final weeks. Unlike the last Federal election, where the government was able to engage in a campaign of "Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt", I don't think that will fly this time around. Albanese is a strategist, who is presenting a moderate plan whereas Morrison is trying to present his record. Unfortunately for Morrison, people know his record. We know his lies as they are well documented. We know that this is a government whose economic record is among the worst in the OECD. We know his fervent denial of the seriousness of climate change, his holidays amidst the bushfires, his cloth ears to the worst of sexist abuses, the nepotism, and the weak Federal action during the pandemic. We are sick of his incessant laziness; "I don't hold a hose", "It's not my job", etc. We are sick of him. We are sick of his lies. We are sick of his laziness. We are sick of his incompetence. We are sick of his lack of leadership, we are sick of his lack of integrity. We are sick of ScottyFromMarketing who is only interested in a photo opportunity and self-promotion to acquire and keep power.

It is far from the powerful halls of Canberra, but tonight I attended a Albert Park branch meeting of the Labor Party, as a new member to the branch. People know that, like most things, I don't hide my politics. As much as I subscribe to anarcho-socialist ideals, I am also very much a pragmatist from a welfare-class background, and as the classic poem says, I'm just too old to rat. I am pleased to say that the meeting at the South Melbourne Railway Hotel was quite packed; the rather beautiful restaurant section was entirely filled with almost fifty people present (I learned to count heads very early in politics) with Tony Wood, Energy Program Director Grattan Institute, giving a very practial presentation on net zero carbon emissions (which dovetailed quite nicely with my own project). I found myself at the table with the Minister for Health, Martin Foley, whom I've known for a couple of decades now and meeting convenor and MLC, Nina Taylor, who I've known for a somewhat shorter period of time. But outside the formalities of the meeting I found most of my conversation being with Wesa Chau, the Party's candidate for Prahan and who comes with an impressive list of achievements. We joked about how I started in politics and have since moved to computer engineering and she followed the opposite path; but at the end of the evening we both agreed that we had chosen our paths with a common and primary motivating thread; to reduce suffering and make the world a better place.

The Australian Federal election is today, and it increasingly seems that we'll have a change of government. Labor has been pretty brave in this election, ignoring the traditional "small target" strategy and has certainly suffered for it, upsetting some powerful media figures, the real estate industry, and opening themselves up to a scare campaign to retirees on franking credit reforms. The wisest economic minds have come out in favour of Labor, but when your economic policy is about targetting recent-seeking and maximising utility (which means more money to the poor), you're going to put some people off. But despite all this, the opinions polls have remained consistently in favour of Labor throughout the campaign and as the end draws near there's even a bounce further to their benefit.

For the own part, the Coalition has run a largely negative campaign focussing on claims of Labor's taxes and claims that they can't manage money, which is curious given that they've doubled net government debt. The major policies came out in the budget preceding the election which the major ticket is a $77bn tax-cut for those earning $180K+ pa and more. Certainly their record (astounding list compiled by Matthew Davis) is nothing to crow about; a succession of leadership challenges, a current prime minister who mocks climate change by bringing a lump of coal into parliament like it's a pet rock, and an parade of questionable contracts with their donors, and their trite slogans have been brilliantly mocked by The Weekly.

Almost on cue to generate a sense of pro-Labor nostalgia, Labor's longest-serving former Prime Minister, Bob Hawke, passed away on Thursday. The media was positively gushing with tributes of this "larrikin" prime minister, famous for holding the world record downing a yard-glass of beer. But it was the deep changes to the Australian economy and legislation which were his more significant achievements. Australia's universal health-care system, Medicare, is certainly one that is highly recognised. Tariff reform helped provide the international diversity of goods we enjoy. Social welfares expenditures were almost double the OECD average, and a slate of anti-discrimination legislation was implemented. Yes, Hawke did engage in a neoliberal agenda as well; union membership plummeted and with 'free riders' now the norm and there was a 'race to the bottom' with company tax cuts. But if you want to see a difference between the two, compare the UK's Thatcher with Hawke. When Hawke died, there is a collective sense of the loss of a favourite. When Thatcher died, people danced in the streets.

For my own part, I went to the impromptu memorial celebration at Trades Hall last night, having just missed Bill Shorten across the road at the pub (did catch up with Liz and Karl, which was awesome). Earlier in the week, I completed my letter-box run with Labor advertising (education and climate change pamphlets). Labor is lucky to get 20% of the vote where I live; it is well-to-do, to put it mildly, and something that was drilled into me as a child was that Labor was the party of the poor. I found myself reminiscing of where I started in life and where I've ended up, and how so few of the people in my locale have experienced poverty. They don't know the endless struggle of looking over basic utility bills and wondering how they will be paid. They don't know of hiding in a room in complete silence when the rent-collector is banging on the door because this week, again, there just isn't enough money to pay. They don't the shame of surreptitiously hiding your homework and claiming that you forgot to do it, because the task was to do a floorplan of where you live, and yours is 1/5th of everyone else around you. They don't know the indignity of begging a charity for a food parcel, just so there will be something on the table at Christmas. I do know those experiences, and whilst they are long in my past, they are deep and old scars.

Tomorrow is election day here in Victoria and, if the final day opinion polls can be believed, the result should be a re-election of the Daniel Andrew's Labor government, which has navigated a path between some impressive economic metrics whilst at the same time being socially progressive, with all indications that this agenda would continue. For his part the opposition leader, Matthew Guy has appealed to religious fundamentalists and knee-jerk reactions on crime issues; I have penned some words on Isocracy on Matthew Guy's Criminal Lies. All of which underscores a problem was once a more moderate, albeit centre-right, Liberal Party with strong Deakinite leanings. Immediate previous leaders - even with their personal failings, the conservatism, their superciliousness, - such as Denis Napthine, Ted Baillieu, even Robert Doyle - were not as dangerous as the current Liberal leader. His appeals to hard-right populism and he stated opposition to evidence-based policy makes him the worst Liberal choice for over fifteen years.

Apart from rising stress levels over the election, the rest of the week have been quite enjoyable. I've had a very productive few days putting together a paper and poster on the Square Kilometre Array, as an example of sensor and signal processing technologies. Gaming-wise had a very enjoyable one-off of Call of Cthulhu last night with the participation of one our regular player's father ("So, what are these roleplaying games all about then?"). Much to his credit he picked up the key tropes right away and really enjoyed the night. RuneQuest session last Sunday was further fire-and-sword mission with a mighty haul in reward. The day prior was a meeting of Linux Users of Victoria where Andrew Worsley provided a rather different approach on introducing shell scripting, which was followed with a visit to Anthony L., to fix up some Mac and RAID issues, and then finally to Brendan E.'s place where we were treated to another episode of Utopia (UK). Finally, a minor item, I sprained my big toe of all things during the week and on Tuesday was reduced to a few hobbling steps around the house. Mostly recovered now, a bit tender, but also makes one realise how dependent they are on such an extremity.